REPUBLICAN INTIMIDATION IS A NON-STORY

Yesterday, Reuters published a detailed story about violent threats to school board members. Does anyone care?

The letter came to the home of Brenda Sheridan, a Loudoun County, Virginia school board member, addressed to one of her adult children. It threatened to kill them both unless she left the board.

“It is too bad that your mother is an ugly communist whore,” said the hand-scrawled note, which the family read just after Christmas. “If she doesn’t quit or resign before the end of the year, we will kill her, but first, we will kill you!”

School board members across the United States have endured a rash of terroristic threats and hostile messages ignited by roiling controversies over policies on curtailing the coronavirus, bathroom access for transgender students and the teaching of America’s racial history.

Reuters documented the intimidation through contacts and interviews with 33 board members across 15 states and a review of threatening and harassing messages obtained from the officials or through public records requests. The news organization found more than 220 such messages in this sampling of districts. School officials or parents in 15 different counties received or witnessed threats they considered serious enough to report to police....

About half the hostile messages documented by Reuters were sent to Sheridan, former chair of the Loudoun County, Virginia, school board, amid controversies over coronavirus protections, anti-racism efforts and bathroom policy. Twenty-two messages sent to Sheridan or the entire board included death threats or said members should be or would be killed.

In June, she received a threat saying: “Brenda, I am going to gut you like the fat f‑‑‑ing pig you are when I find you.”

The alleged horrors of mask mandates, critical race theory, and "boys in girls' bathrooms" are all national stories, because the right-wing media and Republican politicians have made them national stories.

These threats? It's good that Reuters is telling us about them. But despite occasional reporting like this, the story hasn't broken through. And no Democrat has tried to make these would-be intimidators the face of the Republican Party. When Democrats talk about the 2022 midterms, they talk about what they think is wrong with their own party. They're always on the defensive. This is from Politico:

Democrats’ own research shows that some battleground voters think the party is “preachy,” “judgmental” and “focused on culture wars,” according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

And the party’s House campaign arm had a stark warning for Democrats: Unless they more forcefully confront the GOP’s “alarmingly potent” culture war attacks, from critical race theory to defunding the police, they risk losing significant ground to Republicans in the midterms.

... In presentations over the past two weeks, party officials and operatives used polling and focus group findings to argue Democrats can’t simply ignore the attacks....

The data showed that Democrats could mostly regain the ground lost to Republicans if they offered a strong rebuttal to the political hits. When faced with a “defund the police” attack, for instance, the presenters encouraged Democrats to reiterate their support for police. And on immigration, they said Democrats should deny support for “open borders or amnesty,” and talk about their efforts to keep the border safe.

If Democrats are being told to say anything bad about Republicans, I'm not aware of it.

And as far as I know, this isn't a story anywhere except Media Matters:

Ben Marble, a medical doctor who recently spoke at a Capitol Hill event held by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), made a deranged appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ broadcast where he said the COVID-19 pandemic could be ended by killing several government officials and public figures and bombing the next meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Marble said the following people deserve to die and that if he was the U.S. president he would have them killed: financier and philanthropist George Soros, World Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci, and “a few others.” Then saying that “the job of soldiers during war is to arrest and/or kill the enemy,” Marble repeated the previous names, along with President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’.

On the Jones show, Marble said:

"... If I was president, [George Soros] would be the first person I would take out, along with Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and Fauci, and a few others. Those people, minimum, they need to be arrested and on trial.”

“The job of soldiers during war is to arrest and/or kill the enemy. Well, first you have to know who the enemy is. And I’m clearly stating who the enemy is. The enemy is Nazi Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates of Hell, George Sore-ass, Dr. Death Fauci, Dementia Joe, Kamala Whore-is.”

Johnson is running for reelection this year and is expected to face a tight race. If a Democrat in a similar position had invited a speaker to an event who later called for the death of Republican officeholders, it would be a huge story on the right. Fox News would make the speaker a household name.

But it won't happen in this case. All we ever talk about are Democrats' real or imagined failings. Unless Donald Trump is involved, or perhaps Marjorie Taylor Greene, most people in our political culture don't talk about the spreading sickness on the right. As a result, there are few if any consequences for this kind of talk, and there won't be until someone is killed.